Over the Sea’s Wide Back
Feature Film | International Social Drama | 102 pages
Inspired by the Homeric Hymn to Demeter
Logline
When a Nigerian seamstress accompanies her younger sister to Spain for a promised job, both are drawn into a human-trafficking network. After her sister dies in captivity, she must find a way to unite the women held on a wealthy Spanish estate and lead their collective escape.
Synopsis
Osarugue, a 54-year-old seamstress in Benin City, Nigeria, has built a modest, independent life. Her younger sister, Amenze, wants something more. When Amenze accepts an offer of well-paid work in Spain, Osarugue reluctantly accompanies her, intending to make sure she is safe before returning home.
Instead, the sisters are taken across the Sahara, through North Africa and over the Strait of Gibraltar into a system of debt bondage and forced labor on a prosperous agricultural estate near Barcelona.
When Amenze becomes seriously ill, the estate’s managers refuse to provide timely medical care. She dies on the packing-house floor. Osarugue is subsequently transferred to the owners’ private household, where she becomes caregiver to their young son, Pau. Through the child, she learns Spanish and comes to understand the mechanisms that keep the women captive.
At the estate’s annual festival, a flamenco performance inspired by the Homeric Hymn to Demeter brings Osarugue into contact with women outside the estate. Together with Mariama, Awa, Esther, and the other workers, she helps organize an escape that depends not on an individual rescuer but on the women’s own decisions, cooperation, and courage.
As Demeter withdraws her gifts from the world onstage, the captive women withdraw their labor from the estate—and walk toward freedom together.
The Story Behind the Title
In the ancient Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the goddess disguises herself as a woman named Doso, who describes being carried across the sea against her will by men who took her captive.
Over the Sea’s Wide Back brings that ancient account of abduction and displacement into the present.
The film’s central parallel is Demeter’s refusal to sustain a world that has violated her daughter. Through Osarugue’s grief and the women’s collective resistance, the myth becomes a contemporary story about the withdrawal of labor, obedience, and cooperation from those who exploit them.
Themes
Sisterhood and loss. Osarugue’s love for Amenze drives the journey, and her grief gives the story its emotional center.
Human trafficking and forced labor. The film exposes exploitation in agricultural production and private households, including the withholding of wages, documents, mobility, and medical care.
Language and power. As Osarugue learns Spanish from Pau, she gains the ability to understand, confront, and ultimately defy her captors.
Collective action. Liberation comes not from a solitary heroine or an outside savior, but from women organizing, making difficult choices, and acting together.
Artistic Approach
Set across Nigeria, North Africa, and Spain, the screenplay combines a multilingual realist drama with the symbolic language of Greek myth.
Two annual flamenco performances form a visual and musical framework. The first introduces Doso, the displaced stranger. The second transforms her into Demeter, whose refusal to serve is echoed by the women of the estate.
West African women’s music provides a cultural and emotional counterpoint to the flamenco performances, connecting the story’s Spanish setting to the women’s African origins.
The film depicts coercion and violence without sensationalizing the women’s suffering. Its dramatic emphasis remains on their relationships, decisions, and agency.
Featured Music — Sin mi querer (Against My Will)
Sin mi querer is a flamenco lament inspired by the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, in which the goddess, disguised as Doso, recounts being carried across the sea against her will.
In Over the Sea’s Wide Back, the song accompanies the first festival performance, where the ancient story of abduction finds its modern counterpart in the lives of trafficked women.
The flamenco performance becomes a recurring dramatic element, culminating in the women’s collective refusal to submit.
Screenplay
Written by Susan N. Guggenheim
Feature screenplay | 102 pages | Completed October 2026
Screenplay and additional materials available to industry professionals upon request.